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Agamemnon
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Lines 1-263Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Lines 1-39 Summary: Prologue
The play is set in the Greek city of Argos before the palace of King Agamemnon. A watchman who is stationed on the roof of the palace delivers a monologue, explaining that Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife and the Queen of Argos, ordered him to stand watch every night, looking out for the signal fires that will indicate the conquest of Troy by Agamemnon’s army. The watchman complains about the drudgery of his task. Suddenly, he sees the signal fires and rejoices. He sets out to deliver the news to Clytemnestra and cryptically expresses his hope that Agamemnon will truly return and set the city and his house in order. His lines hint at an unspoken apprehensiveness about the state of things in Argos under Clytemnestra.
Lines 40-263 Summary: Parodos
As the watchman exits, the chorus, made up of Argive elders, enters the stage to sing its first song, the parodos. In a song spanning over 200 lines—the longest choral song of any surviving Attic tragedy—the chorus reflects on the events leading to the Trojan War and Agamemnon’s absence from his city. Agamemnon and his brother, Menelaus, “twin throned, twin sceptered, in twofold power / Of kings from god” (43-44) gathered a vast Greek army to fight against Troy after the Trojan prince, Paris, carried off Menelaus’s wife, Helen. The gods, the chorus suggests, decided to punish the Trojans for violating the laws of hospitality, and fate and destiny are testing the Trojans and the Greeks. As the rest of its countrymen went to war, however, the elderly chorus stayed home in Argos.
The chorus addresses Clytemnestra, asking what her plans are, and observes that she began offering sacrifices to the gods. The chorus, like the watchman, is apprehensive; even as its members watch Clytemnestra’s offerings, they dread what is to come.
The chorus continues describing the backstory, reflecting on an omen that was observed before the Greeks sailed to Troy: Two eagles, representing Agamemnon and Menelaus, tore apart a pregnant hare, symbolizing Troy. According to Calchas, a seer, the omen was a sign that the Greeks would conquer Troy, but it also served to anger the goddess Artemis. Calchas revealed that to appease Artemis, Agamemnon would need to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia. The chorus’s song of Artemis’s anger is interwoven with a sullen but hopeful refrain: “Sing sorrow, sorrow: but good win out in the end” (121, 139, 159). The Chorus address Zeus, the king of the gods, “who has laid it down that wisdom / Comes alone through suffering” (177-78). The chorus then returns to the story of the sacrifice of Iphigenia: The Greek fleet was not given a wind for sailing while the angry Artemis awaited the sacrifice, so Agamemnon finally went through with it. The chorus gives a detailed and chilling description of Iphigenia’s being taken to the altar, pleading in vain with her father and the Greeks, raised above the altar “as you might lift / A goat for sacrifice” (233-34). The sacrifice completed, the Greeks set sail. The chorus concludes its song with a meditation on the nature of justice, suffering, and fate, though it expresses hope that things will turn out well for Argos.
Lines 1-263 Analysis
The Prologue and parodos of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon set the tone of the play. The watchman’s monologue and the chorus’s song are both marked by an oscillation between apprehension and hope. To the watchman, who is looking out for the fires that will signal the fall of Troy and the light of hope, something sinister is happening in Argos and in the house of the absent king, Agamemnon. The watchman is cryptic in expressing his fears. He refers to Clytemnestra’s “male strength of heart” (11)—an attribute that will soon be put on display when she comes onstage—and speaks with veiled dread provoked by the events that transpired in Agamemnon’s absence. He hopes that Agamemnon’s return will somehow set things in order, though he does not explicitly state the cause of the disorder. As if he is cautious of who may hear him, the watchman cuts his speech short: “The rest / I leave to silence; for an ox stands huge upon / My tongue. The house itself, could it take voice, might / Speak aloud and plain. I speak to those who understand, / But if they fail, I have forgotten everything” (34-39).
The chorus’s song is similarly darkened by apprehension. The parodos is filled with reflections on fate and the retributive justice of the gods, including Paris’s punishment for abducting Helen and Agamemnon’s punishment for his (future) conquest of Troy. Almost self-consciously, the chorus brightens its song, albeit dimly, with hopes that things will turn out well, as in the refrain that interweaves its account of the anger of Artemis: “Sing sorrow, sorrow: but good win out in the end” (121, 139, 159). For the chorus, this hope must struggle against apprehension: Even as the chorus watches Clytemnestra sacrifice to the gods in response to the news of Agamemnon’s return, it remarks that again sweet hope shining from the flames / beats back the pitiless pondering / of sorrow that eats my heart (101-3).
The Prologue and the parodos also introduce many of the play’s central themes. Justice—specifically, the retributive brand of justice handed out by the gods to punish sinners—emerges prominently in the parodos. For example, the chorus describes the gods’ sending “the Fury upon the transgressors” (59) of Troy after Paris violated the laws of hospitality by abducting the wife of his host, Menelaus. As a result, Troy is fated to be destroyed by the Greeks. The chorus also introduces the idea that “wisdom / Comes alone through suffering” (177-78); indeed, “Justice tilts her scale so that those only / Learn who suffer” (250-51). These sections draw connections among the play’s core themes—justice, fate, and suffering that will continue to be developed as the play continues.
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By Aeschylus
